Alice, or the Mysteries — CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
"It is astonishing," said Cleveland, "how certain family features are
transmitted from generation to generation! Maltravers has still
the forehead and eyebrows of the Digbys,--that peculiar, brooding,
thoughtful forehead, which you observed in the picture of Sir Kenelm.
Once, too, he had much the same dreaming character of mind, but he
has lost that, in some measure at least. He has fine qualities, Miss
Cameron,--I have known him since he was born. I trust his career is not
yet closed; could he but form ties that would bind him to England, I
should indulge in higher expectations than I did even when the wild boy
turned half the heads in Gottingen.
"But we were talking of family portraits: there is one in the
entrance-hall, which perhaps you have not observed; it is half
obliterated by damp and time, yet it is of a remarkable personage,
connected with Maltravers by ancestral intermarriages,--Lord Falkland,
the Falkland of Clarendon; a man weak in character, but made most
interesting by history,--utterly unfitted for the severe ordeal of those
stormy times; sighing for peace when his whole soul should have been in
war; and repentant alike whether with the Parliament or the king,
but still a personage of elegant and endearing associations; a
student-soldier, with a high heart and a gallant spirit. Come and look
at his features,--homely and worn, but with a characteristic air of
refinement and melancholy thought."
Thus running on, the agreeable old gentleman drew Evelyn into the outer
hall. Upon arriving there, through a small passage, which opened upon
the hall, they were surprised to find the old housekeeper and another
female servant standing by a rude kind of couch on which lay the form of
the poor woman described in the last chapter. Maltravers and two other
men were also there; and Maltravers himself was giving orders to his
servants, while he leaned over the sufferer, who was now conscious both
of pain and the service rendered to her. As Evelyn stopped abruptly, and
in surprise, opposite and almost at the foot of the homely litter, the
woman raised herself up on one arm, and gazed at her with a wild stare;
then muttering some incoherent words which appeared to betoken delirium,
she sank back, and was again insensible.
CHAPTER IV.
HENCE oft to win some stubborn maid,
Still does the wanton god assume
The martial air, the gay cockade,
The sword, the shoulder-knot, and plume.
MARRIOTT.
THE hall was cleared, the sufferer had been removed, and Maltravers was
left alone with Cleveland and Evelyn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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